Liar, Liar
by Tris'sLightningQuill
Summary: This is a character study I've been wanting to play with for a while, concerning little Maggie. I wanted to explore the gifts of the vampires, how they work, how they're dealt with.
1. Chapter 1

"He ran away, Maggie." her brother insisted for the hundredth time.

"I don't believe you," she pouted, folding her arms across her skinny chest. Rob stomped off to the rest of his chores, cringing at his sister's plaintive cry ringing out behind him. "Tell the truth! What happened to my dog?"

"He ran away, didn't he? Now lemme be!"

But he lied. Maggie _knew_ it was a lie, even before she stumbled across the little patch of fresh-turned earth a little ways into the field.


	2. Chapter 2

"Papa! Papa!" She tugged on her father's sleeve, but he didn't slow, striding out of the dark, smoky kitchen into the dark, smoky night. Halfway to their small byre, he turned to look at her, his eyes lined with care and drooping with exhaustion. She'd tagged behind him for an hour or more, ever since the doctor left, but he'd ignored her increasingly desperate attempts until the dinner was set out, and the little boys interested only in the thin cabbage water in front of their noses. _One last time_, Maggie told herself, even though she was afraid of the answer, just as afraid as her father was to give it.

"_Is_ Mumma going to get well?" she demanded in a voice suddenly little better than a whisper.

Her father looked down at his eight-year-old daughter for a long while and said nothing. "I don't know," he muttered finally, disappearing into the barn for the comfort of solitude and rough homemade liquor.

Maggie stood frozen beside the open kitchen door, the stars above wheeling with unnatural speed, the land around her blurred into a mess of darkness by the tears in her eyes, creeping in cold lines down her dirty cheeks. _Please, God,_ she tried, but could not go on. Her father _did_ know.


	3. Chapter 3

_Maggie watched in silence as he packed a single scrip bag with all the tomes from the university. She watched helplessly as he gathered all the peeling scrolls from the chest in the study. She watched and said nothing as he opened the compartment beneath the floorboards he'd always taken such pains to hide from her, and removed several crystal decanters and a thick manuscript. She knew then. He was going to do it; he was going to leave._

"_I'm going now," he told her solemnly, fastening the catch on his beaten leather bag._

"_Please don't!" Maggie fell to her knees and clutched at the hem of her creator's robe._

_He shook her off impatiently. "I've put this off too long as it is, Margaret, and you know that."_

"_Then take me with you!" she implored, reaching for his hands, catching thin air as he pulled them away, out of her reach._

_He stroked her brow tenderly, smiling down sadly like a father whose only child asks a stupid question. "There is nothing for you in Italy. You would only pine for home."_

"_Don't leave me alone!" she begged, venom stinging behind her eyes._

"_I'll come back for you," he promised as he stepped away across the room. Maggie hung her head, let her hands fall limply to her lap where she knelt still on the floor; and said nothing at all._

_Two hundred years she'd been waiting. He never came back._


	4. Chapter 4

"_Now, I'm not gonna harm you. Come out of there, you little devil...oh, Begorrah!" he cursed as she bit at his fishing fingertips. Maggie shrank back deeper into the recess between the rocks, pressing her skinny body tighter against the stone, clinging with fingers and toes. She heard uncertainty in the vampire's voice. If it came to that, aye, he would harm her, without a second's thought or guilt after, given the chance. Maggie wasn't going to give him that chance. A feral hiss of warning slithered out between the gaps in her clenched teeth. If indeed it came to a fight, she would give this strange vampire as good as she got._

"_Leave off, Liam. You're scaring the poor thing." A new voice, a woman's, closer. "Now listen to me, little one. You've laid such a trail here as an idiot could follow without trying. And trust me, lass, they _will_. You've got to be careful. Witch hunts aren't dead here, don't you know to be careful where you kill?" Maggie didn't answer. She heard the truth in the woman's words. They were coming for her, coming again, and she was so tired of running. And if she ran too far...what if he came back? What if she had gone, and missed him? She knew, though, knew with the bitter certainty of Truth that she would have to run far and fast indeed this time to get away from the mess she'd made. Dublin was a big city now, and that should have made it easier to hunt unnoticed. Not for her, though. Of course not for her. She had to be the little idiot that couldn't stop at the leavings of marauding gangs, the half-bled out corpses dumped beside the harbor's edge, easy pickings that let her run away afterwards. She had to lose her head, and now they were coming to hunt her. Again. _

"_Come on out, now." the woman's voice coaxed. She knelt down on the peat beside the little cave, peering up into the dark recess with red, red eyes. "We can hide you." The strange vampire woman smiled up at her—a wide grin of pure intent in a wide, heart-shaped face—with such sincerity that Maggie felt her heart softening in spite of herself, her hammer-beaten resolve slip and hitch._

_The woman offered her hand. "There isn't much time." Maggie bit her lip with her sharp teeth, hesitating. That was certainly true. The vampire proffered her hand again encouragingly. "It's all gonna be fine," she promised, and suddenly, Maggie believed her. She took the strange woman's hand and swung out of the crevasse into the weak afternoon twilight. They three ran together into the deepening gloam._

"_I'm Siobhan," the woman told her, smiling again, though her swarthy mate remained taciturn._

_Maggie said nothing, but neither did she take her hand from Siobhan's warm grip._


	5. Chapter 5

_They ran. It might have been seconds, or minutes, or hours. Maggie didn't know; she'd given up keeping track of time a while back. Now and then she glanced over her shoulder, watching as the lights faded on the horizon, although they never went away. The island was too small, and her eyes far too sharp._

_They held her wrists, one on each side, dragging her on into the wilderness. The sky deepened like a bruise out before them into infinity. For a long while, she forgot to breathe, and it was a long while after that that she could persuade her lungs to unclench._

_The first breath brought with it the sharp scent of the two that ran beside her—the dark, untrusting male on her left—a tired-horse/peat-smoke/wet-straw smell that was almost familiar—and the red-haired female on her right—whose was a rosewater/satin/early-morning scent that smelled, Maggie supposed, rather like a princess. The male shot her furtive, wary glances out of the corners of his maroon eyes. She could not recall his name._

"_We're almost there," the female breathed , glancing over with another encouraging smile that crinkled up the corners of her scarlet eyes. Maggie glanced fretfully over her shoulder, but there was no angry red glow of an oncoming mob, only the sickly white cast of the city lights on the underbelly of brooding clouds...No, wait. That was before. Humans didn't carry flaming brands anymore, she recalled detachedly, but there were no headlights either. She bit her lip as she swung her eyes forward again. '_Forget_ him,' she snarled internally. 'He's not coming back for you! That was a long time ago.'_

_Before she quite knew it, a huge stone structure loomed up and overtook them. It was old, and crumbling in places, tall and thick, and best of all obviously long-deserted. It might have been a mill, or a church, or a prison, she didn't know, couldn't tell, wasn't thinking straight. All this lying to herself was really messing with her head._

_Her new coven dragged Maggie down and down into the catacombs, cold and dark and damp, but she was used to that. At least the sun wouldn't blind her down here._

"_You're safe, now," the female told her—Siobhan, she finally recalled. Siobhan, that was her name. Maggie heard the undeniable ring of Truth in the female's words, and for the first time in nearly three hundred years, she began to relax._


End file.
